A Waste of Waters, 1907 (oil on canvas)

The title of the picture comes from Robert Southey, his poem Madoc of 1805 recounting the ocean voyage of a medieval Welsh king to America: 'Day after day, day after day the same . . . A weary waste of waters!' Hemy, a devout Catholic, forged a deep spiritual bond with the sea when he was only nine years old, enduring the passage from Liverpool to Melbourne with his family, a three month journey; their trip back to England, four years later, would take twice as long. By the time the Hemys returned to Newcastle, Charles was an experienced sailor at the age of thirteen. The sea would haunt him for the rest of his life, as he later wrote, 'it entered my soul, it was imprinted on my mind, and I never forgot it, I have gone on painting it all my life' Hemy considered his best work to be produced in 1908, at the age of 67, when the present picture was exhibited. A Waste of Waters is the culmination of decades spent sketching the water- a vast, empty sea, churns slowly as gulls swoop overhead.